It was a perfect sunny day, and a pleasant breeze blew in through the car window. That, plus the gentle vibrations of the engine, plus a critical lack of sleep, all combined to create one sleepy Hinako. Her eyelids drooped against her will.
“Should we have agreed on a later time?” the firefighter asked as he gripped the steering wheel. Today he was wearing a denim button-up over a plain cotton T-shirt. His work uniform was super sexy, of course, but he looked right at home in a more casual grunge style too.
“Oh, no, I’m wide awa—” But before Hinako could even finish her sentence, she felt a giant yawn coming on, so she hastily clapped a hand over her mouth. “Weird… Why am I yawning…?”
Not only had this outing been her suggestion, he’d gone to the trouble of picking her up in his car! Ugh, she was being so rude! Maybe all the excitement had fried her brain.
Fortunately, he was willing to laugh it off. “Feel free to nap until we get there. I know you had to move a lot of stuff.”
He was just so mature and considerate—nothing like the guys her own age.
“Yeah, but all I had to do was carry it down a bunch of floors. Piece of cake!” Hinako said. God, please don’t let him find out my whole apartment was nothing but boxes.
“The balconies at that complex are extremely flammable, so be careful. If a fire starts on a lower floor, it’ll shoot up faster than you know it.”
Come to think of it, the fire had mostly spread in a single vertical line.
“Got it! I’ll be careful,” said Hinako. Note to self: keep the flammable stuff inside the house.
“I gotta say, your job sounds pretty complicated,” she added. “They were shooting off fireworks over in that half-finished building next door, right? And you guys had to set ’em straight?”
Apparently the source had been a group of rowdy young adults. They had trespassed into the construction site, and they hadn’t had a pyrotechnics license either. Without that license, they couldn’t legally purchase commercial-grade fireworks…so where had they gotten their hands on all that?
“Tell me about it. What a headache… Apparently it’s some kind of new viral video challenge.”
So they’d done it all for the views? But this stunt was far more serious than simply playing with sparklers in the park…and yet none of them had showed a trace of remorse while they were giving their statements to the police.
“I actually used to live in this area back when I was little,” said Hinako. “But then we had to move closer to my grandparents so my dad could take over the family business…but I’ve always wanted to move back, y’know? So I enrolled at the college here.”
The car flew breezily down Surf Street.
“So anyway, what about you, uhhh…insert-name-here?” she asked.
“What?”
Clutching her head, Hinako decided to just come clean. “Ugh, I’m sorry! I don’t know how to pronounce your name!”
On LINE, the firefighter’s user handle displayed 雛罌粟港—the sort of obscure kanji characters you’d see on a quiz show on TV.
“My last name? It’s Hinageshi.”
“Oh, so that’s how you pronounce that?!” Come to think of it, Hinako remembered the man in glasses calling for “Hinageshi” the night of the fire. “So it’s Hinageshi…Minato? Or…?”
“Yeah. A lot of people think it’s Kou, but it’s Minato.”
“Oh yeah, I can relate. People always read my last name Mukoumizu, but it’s actually Mukaimizu.” And since mukoumizu carried the double meaning of “reckless,” this misreading often felt like a stealth insult.
“Got it,” Minato grinned, and Hinako swooned a little. “For the record, next time there’s a fire, you want to try to get to low ground. Go down, not up.”
Oh, okay. I’d better make another mental note.
Just then, Hinako looked up and spotted two plushie keychains hanging from the rearview mirror. One was a sea turtle, just like Minato’s LINE icon, and the other was—
“Is that a finless porpoise?!”
“Sure is! And not a beluga, contrary to most people’s assumptions,” Minato nodded cheerfully.
“I knew it!”
This came as a surprise and a delight. Many people mistook Hinako’s porpoise decal for a beluga. While the two animals did look similar at first glance, in reality they were actually very different in size. The finless porpoise was easily among the smallest species of whale.
“You must really like them. Even your car looks like a porpoise!” Hinako said. With its circular headlights and rounded frame, Minato’s car looked exactly like a cartoony little porpoise. “I’m a big fan of porpoises, actually! They remind me of Bakeratta, you know?”
Bakeratta was a baby ghost from an old vintage anime who was shaped like an upside-down fishbowl. Technically his name wasn’t Bakeratta—that was just the only word he knew how to say. But because of that, Hinako’s family always referred to him as Bakeratta. What was his actual name, again? He was Little Ghost Q-Taro’s younger brother, so…Q-Taro II?
According to Minato, this cute little porpoise car was in fact a 1960s French compact economy model.
“Should I put on some tunes?” he asked. “What kind of music are you into?”
Hinako appreciated his casual segue. Meanwhile, they headed up the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line from Kisarazu to Kawasaki.
“Just put on whatever music you like,” she told him.
“Hmmm… Okay, then…” Minato connected his smartphone to the cassette adapter and pushed it into the player. A familiar upbeat melody began to play.
“Oh my God, what a throwback!” Hinako gasped.
It was a J-pop song by a well-known boy band. When Hinako was little, this song had topped all the charts. They’d played it all the time at the seaside clubhouse too.
“It got featured in a movie recently, so they’re playing it on the radio again,” said Minato.
Interesting. Evidently the two of them had the same taste in music. This won a lot of brownie points with Hinako.
I see you there, looking at the water
Glittering sapphire as far as the eye can see
Bit by bit, you’ll find that its color will change
Kaleidoscopic majesty
But our lives won’t always be sunshine
Now and then the rain will fall
And if you want to, you could just stand there
Or together we’ll rise up and fight through it all
That’s right
Now’s the time to open your eyes and see
The start of your brand new story
The rest of your life is just around the bend
Just keep pushing forward and in the end
You’ll find your way back to me
This is our story…
Just like that, Hinako was back in her comfort zone, and as she sang along happily, Minato smiled at her and joined in.
In order to teach a beginner surfer how to do a takeoff—i.e., the transition to a standing position on the board—you ideally wanted to start them off at a wide, shallow beach where it would be easier to read the waves. The size and condition of any given wave was subject to change depending on the wind and direction of said wave.
After spending the previous night thoroughly researching the weather reports and checking the wave conditions according to the local surf shops, Hinako settled on the Southern Beach Chigasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture for their destination. Of course, their local Kujukuri Beach back in Chiba Prefecture was a surfer’s paradise in its own right—arguably even Japan’s most preeminent surfing location, given the sheer number of waves it boasted—but at this time of year, the wind was unruly and the weather was unpredictable. (Admittedly, this extensive research was partially to blame for Hinako’s lack of sleep.)